Probably the most noticeable difference between Autechre’s latest LP Quaristice and their back catalog is song length. The electronic superstar duo is still cranking out experimental music, as signified by the complex rhythms, amorphous tones, and colorful aural textures, harkening back to their latter experimental albums such as LP5 and Draft 7.30. The difference is that the songs are significantly smaller, with a few notable exceptions.

These exceptions perhaps reveal a growth in soundmasters Sean Booth and Rob Brown. The first song to break five minutes is Simmm, which sounds much like a Tri Repetae b-side. An abstract but traceable pots-n-pans beat is built upon with very clean cut sounding IDM synthesizers until the latter half of the song kicks in with an assortment of sound experimentation that we would come to expect from more recent Autechre; synthetic sounds vaguely resembling water splashing, Mario going down a green pipe, or metallic pops are the norm for the duo. What makes Simmm particularly interesting is that it develops and ends within the five minute length comfortably. We can only guess, but guess reasonably that if Autechre made this song ten years ago, it would have likely continued on for an additional unnecessary five minutes. This improved awareness of time is applied with great success on some songs, such as Simmm and many of the more off the wall compositions on the album, which are not necessarily bad but do not need to be test driven or worked with for more than the two or three minutes given to them.

However, another thing that makes Quaristice a pretty bold album for Autechre are its ambient pieces, and it is difficult to say whether or not they were subject to deliberate timing decisions. The opening Altibzz is one such ambient song, and is destined to be an electronic classic. Probably the most beautiful piece the group have ever recorded, it shows an impressive amount of restraint with its soft synthesizer melodies that intermingle with one another to form brief and understated harmonies, the result being a mesmerizingly beautiful song that is full of life. The song clocks in at 2:52, and although many listeners could have probably listened to the song for five minutes more without getting tired, its brevity makes the song that much more delicious and fleeting, much like the shortest and sweetest pieces by Warp compatriots Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada.

But alternately, we have the opposite side of the spectrum with the less melodic ambient pieces. Of these, Paralel Suns is quite short and both Notwo and Outh9X are very long. The catch is that both seem to work, Paralel Suns being enjoyably brief in contrast to its massive scope, and Notwo being quite long but consistently relaxing, while Outh9X actually does have quite a bit to say and is appropriately the longest song on the album.

But Quaristice is in no way an ambient album. Autechre probably do have it in them to make an ambient album, but Quaristice ends up being fun because of all of the bases it covers, ambient just happening to be the most interesting of them. It is a versatile electronic album, hitting genres as far away from one another as RDJ reminiscent acid house (chenc9), the aforementioned ambient tracks, glitch, and more. But this is Autechre, so a good deal of the tracks are less music than they are experimental organized sound.

It is likely that Quaristice will confuse listeners new to electronic music just as much as Autechre’s previous albums. However, it is still significantly more likely to draw new fans or change the minds of anyone who had their doubts about Autechre, due in part to the band’s new understanding of time management, which is a problem which they have always wrestled with. And because Autechre are still finding new and effective ways to express themselves through electronic music, and are still producing the occasional brilliant cornerstone song to the genre like Altibzz, it has become difficult to deny that they are the future of music, for better or worse.

EL punto con Autechre, es que Autechre siempre se parecera a Autechre. Desde sus comienzos Brown y Booth crean musica que esta llena de ritmos dificiles contrastando con bellas melodias. Desde sus principios la clave fue muy clara, crear una especie de techno inteligente, y de esta forma hacer una musica que estuviera por encima de las moditas y los estilos que llegan y se van. Muy pocos han creado esta proeza, tal vez richard d james o mike paradinas, por citar a algunos. les dejo el link y por favor compren el disco y asistan a sus conciertos. ahh y metanse a su pagina, llegan a hacer brodcast de 8 a doce horas seguidas.

http://rapidshare.com/files/138254275/Autechre_2008_Quaristice.zip.html

(Warp 2008)
Trois ans ont passé depuis Untitled, le dernier album du duo essentiel de Sheffield et comme pour chaque nouveau pavé lancé dans la marre des musiques digitales, Quaristice était attendu de pied ferme : comme le Saint Graal par les uns ou comme une bonne occasion de pouvoir dire qu’ « Autechre, c’était mieux avant » par les autres. C’est qu’on n’était plus habitués ni à autant de concision, ni à autant de longueur, et que ces derniers temps, on avait pris le (mauvais) pli d’appréhender leur musique par blocs, des blocs défragmentés, déconstruits puis reconstruits, mais des blocs, copieux et prolixes. Alors ce Quaristice, un « grand » disque de miniatures qui déroule pas moins de 20 courtes pistes (autant de micro-univers) sur une durée totale de 1h15 … Tout fout le camp au royaume de l’IDM (pour Intelligent Dance Music, paradoxalement l’association de mots la plus sotte et la plus paresseuse à laquelle est associée la musique d’Autechre), et tant mieux puisqu’au fond, depuis le début des années 90, Booth & Brown ne nous ont habitués qu’à une seule chose : une discographie qui avance en hors-pistes, sans balises et débarrassée de toute forme de prévisibilité. La « politique de l’Autechre » ?, me glisse mon inénarrable voisin.
Quaristice n’est donc pas plus un disque de rupture qu’un disque de continuité, si ce n’est qu’on reste en terrain linguistique parfaitement connu : le langage d’Autechre. Celui des rythmiques brisées et concassées, des beats claquant, des formes incertaines et aléatoires, des fourmillements de clics et de cuts, des sonorités industrielles, de courtes citations « club-friendly », mais surtout celui des bulles et des nappes feutrées, des mélodies délicieusement granuleuses qui vireraient parfois presque au pastoral, et des timbres aquatiques qui donnent à ce Quaristice une couleur globalement bien plus proches des lignes pures et claires d’Amber ou de Tri Repetae que des hostilités métalliques de Confield. Pris de loin et dans son ensemble donc, Quaristice semble relativement calme et pacifié. Mais en regardant chaque pièce de plus près, on chancelle vite dans ce mélange – épithètes permutables à souhait – d’abstraction cotonneuse et de quasi-figuralisme robotique (sur « IO », on pense à une paraphrase du Man Machine de Kraftwerk) où l’on ne sait plus vraiment si c’est l’homme qui fait parler la machine ou bien le contraire.
www.warprecords.com
Francoise Massacre
Publié dans: NOISE MAG #5 (avril 2008)

Rate This Day is (kinda) back!

What a crazy past few months. My other project at www.silenceincminor.co.uk is coming along nicely and while we gear up for our run of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe I thought I’d somehow resurrect the beast that is Rate This Day. The content of the site will change slightly and from here on in to plain ol’ music reviews. It’s always been about music for me and the decision was made after I realised that when not reviewing car parks, food or time, the majority of my serious articles were music reviews.

So from here on in it’s all about the tunes and the rock shows here at Rate This Day and to kick things off here’s a review of the new(ish) album from my favourite band, along with a lengthy introduction on the subject of DRM, piracy and my own rabid opinions on the state of modern music.

Rant This Day

I’ve been getting used to the three-year rhythm of Autechre releases. It works out as months of anticipation in the run-up to the inevitable album announcement at the end of the year with the March/April release window seguing nicely into a live tour that’s usually started before the release of the album, each time the UK shows generally falling around the same time frame as the album release itself. My experience this time round was no different until it was announced over the Warp (or it might have been Bleep, I can’t remember) mailing list that the album was to be made available for download on Bleep.com over a full month before the physical release, available as either high quality DRM-free mp3 or FLAC. At the same time a gorgeous special edition that featured a second disc was now available to pre-order.

I’ll be the first to admit as the fervent, long-standing Autechre fan, I jumped at the chance to hear the album in it’s entirety so early on. I diligently purchased the mp3 version at £7 and pre-ordered the £30 special edition having already purchased a £15 ticket for their London show at a car park in Hearn Street a few weeks previous. All in all I’ve spent £52 on the album experience, not just the album itself. I think this is perhaps important to bear in mind because by now Autechre for me have come to embody the perfect music experience when it comes to new music.

I have absolutely no problem in paying that sort of money for a whole experience and I really think there’s something here that says a great deal about the current situation of physical release versus… I don’t know, ethereal release? If the package is good enough, people will pay. The issue I find today is that with current CD prices it’s often the consumer that’s penalised for buying bad music. Downloading music free of charge is such a sticky issue because at the moment there isn’t a viable economic model for it. It’s a burgeoning industry that seems content to make up the rules and regulations as it goes along, slapping Machiavellian DRM on their product and denying consumers their right to enjoy their music in whatever way they see fit. You can’t blame the industry though for these knee-jerk responses to projected lost revenue. They see a down-turn in sales and want to stop the lil’ punks getting their stuff for free, so why not cripple them whatever way they can? Of course they’re going to do it, they’re in the business to make money one way or the other.

A recent controversy surrounding SecuROM technology, a piracy-prevention tool for PC games, has highlighted this. SecuROM works on a similar principle to Steam (a digital content distribution platform for PC games) in regards to anti-piracy measures. Steam works on the basis that you need a connection to the internet to validate the license key that’s bundled with the physical release or you can sign up, purchase and download the game all in the same program. Steam does need to be connected for you to play regardless of whether it’s an off-line single-player or a smack-talking session of twitchy gun play with foul-mouthed children in Counter Strike. Most people seem fine with this although it hasn’t always been plain sailing, the release of Half Life 2 was dogged with problems in product activation, all down to Steam (if memory serves). Recently however the news that Mass Effect for PC and notably Spore, the highly-anticipated new game from Will Wright, the genius behind Sim City, will feature SecuROM technology was met with higher than usual amounts of rage and bitterness from your friendly neighbourhood forum bods. The venom stemmed from the unspeakable notion that companies would somehow want to protect their IP and therefore not lose money. SecuROM requires that the game is activated over the Internet and subsequently checks in to a server somewhere every 10 days to maintain the validation. This is apparently to get round the idea that PC games are purchased and then immediately pirated, a constant polling of the SecuROM component would theoretically invalidate any copy of the game that fails this check. You can apparently still play the game offline but at some point you’d better make sure you get the sucker checked in otherwise the game is locked out. When pressed about the “10 days check-in” it was clarified that it is not a case of checking once on installation and then once ten days after that but checking every ten days. Oh noes!

The response to this news has been swift and characteristically bilious. But really, what would you do as a company? What long-term and mutually beneficial measure should they take that ensures everything is fine in the end and we can get back to picking flowers in the Sunshine Forest to sell at the Appledown Market and be home in time for milk and cookies? It’s never simple on either side and it’s a war that’s only being fought between the record labels cursed with accountants who see a hole in sales which they try to fill and cave-dwelling lesser human beings that don’t see the point in paying for anything (one particular comment that stuck with me was in response to Alan Moore’s disassociation from the V for Vendetta movie on artistic grounds as the creator. Some brazen idiot had the gall to say that Alan Moore shouldn’t complain about bad adaptations because as soon as writers, musicians, artists in general release a piece of work to the public domain it then becomes the property of the public, all creators of such work lose their rights upon release, but that’s a whole different article subject there). On the outskirts, but not necessarily in the minority, are the others who build up a record collection and still download music almost as a way to see if the CD is worth buying in the first place. Downloading and streaming content is very much a viable medium for broadcasting media, US television networks are starting to cotton on to this with such examples as Jon Stewart’s full eight-year run on The Daily Show being made available to watch online, all for free. There is a middle ground with this sort of thing and it’s up to the industry to find it, not the consumer. Ad-supported yet free TV downloads are on the horizon (I hope) and this could extend to films as well. Google seem to have done well with maintaining a “free is free” business model so it can happen. I’m certainly not advocating that we shouldn’t pay for anything at all and that everything should be free because there’s no such thing as true ownership in the hippy sense, that’s not how the world works. Musicians are still people who need to make money at the end of the day. That doesn’t mean that they’re cynically out to make money alone but that they simply need money to continue to pursue their art. It’s their job, their 9 to 5 and frankly I’m fine with paying for Bjork’s latest if it means she can continue being absolutely amazing in every respect, I’m not fine with paying an exorbitant amount for a CD only to find that it’s actually worse than the sound of dogs being nailed to a blackboard.

So it goes without saying that a review of an Autechre record that starts with a diatribe about downloading music has to mention cerebral guitar moppets Radiohead and their “pay what you like” stunt for In Rainbows (an album I don’t particularly rate by the way). I’m not sure what this episode highlighted other than “you get what you pay for”, people complained of snagging poor-quality mp3s when they decided to download the album for free. Now this wasn’t implied on the site but maybe they did hit on something here. A tier-based system of downloading music might be a possible solution. Albums could be downloaded for free if they’re encoded around 64 to 96kbps and the price gets comfortably higher according to quality. Bleep.com currently employ a similar approach that amounts to paying £6.99 for 320kbps variable lame encoded mp3 and £8.99 for FLAC. Other artists have followed suit with their own ideas, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame released something about free music about ghosts, or whatever. Each individual case where a band or artist supposedly pontificate about the current state of play of the music industry is greeted by wavelets of press but on the whole things don’t really seem to be changing as much as they would perhaps like. It seems like each time it happens it’s just a proposed solution that doesn’t really seem to take off or indeed revolutionise the way we think about acquiring and owning music, everyone’s waiting for their turn to say: “What about this? Why don’t we try it this way?”. I can’t help the feeling that this will continue for some time until someone cracks it, although I’m fairly certain as mentioned before that it will have to be the industry that gets the flash of divine inspiration on this one rather than Bono deciding in a year’s time to make the entire U2 back catalogue available for free to download provided you produce evidence that you’ve sold your carbon dioxide-emitting car and donated the funds to various third-world charities; just another possible idea.

To bring it back to the point in regards to Autechre it seems that this too is yet another response to the threat of piracy to the musician. However for the less cynical it could in fact be simply a reward for the true fans. The announcement was made using the newsletter and in my experience this has often been the source of juicy Warp-related goodness several days or sometimes weeks before the announcement makes it to Warp’s front page. Was it genuinely for the fans eager to be the early adopters? Knowing this was it a somewhat cynical attempt to gouge these eager fans into parting with their hard-earned several weeks early? It’s difficult to tell but all things considered it’s a worthy addition to the collection of stories surrounding the downloading issue kick-started by Thom Yorke and the Radio Heads.

Autechre – Quaristice

Quaristice is Autechre’s ninth studio album and as such it’s quite a departure. Gone are the grandiose suites of six to eight minute sounds of a Nord synthesiser and 808 drum machine engaging in mathematical warfare and instead we have a collection of bits and pieces. It’s a collection of off-cuts and out-takes that was supposedly constructed from beats and textures that were lying dormant in the duo’s live equipment used in the previous tour around the release of 2005’s Untilted. It’s a formidable record that feels initially quite disparate and with twenty tracks to it’s name it’s easy to see why.

The album commences innocuously enough with soft pads and stuttering ambience before plunging headlong into the not exactly atypical beat-orientated “The PLC”. This contrast between thoughtful yet slightly washy ambience and plunging rhythmic thunder is essentially the album to a tee but it’s the overall pacing and how easily it flits between the two that makes Quaristice so engaging. It’s been quite some time since the pair have dabbled with beat-less soundscapes (in my my mind the best example of this was “VLetrmx21″ from Garbage EP) and the short vignettes peppered throughout the album serve as interesting way points. The heavily edited rhythmic pieces never quite outstay their welcome with the average track length in the two to four minute range, considerably shorter than their average track length.

Listening to Quaristice is an exercise in music consideration and appreciation. It never seems that tracks are around long enough to warrant a response that goes beyond cocking one’s head to one side and musing thoughtfully on the past few minutes, maybe even stroking a beard or making a “hmm” noise while frowning slightly. The pace is considerable but never breathless, stand-out tracks are much more noticeable as a result. Pieces like “IO”, “rale” and “WNSN” are glorious examples of funked-up booty-shaking electronica that really jumped out but there are plenty more gems buried low in the mix once you’ve given the thing a few listens.

That’s always been the issue with Autechre albums. Initially they’re imposing beasts but over time their reveal their inner beauty and impressive construction. Quaristice is no different, I’ve been listening to it on and off since the release and I’m happy to say that it’s one of their finest albums. It’s quite a bold achievement for them as at times you do have to wonder how many times they can keep putting out records using the same formula. I managed to get hold of the special edition which features a bonus disc of longer cuts of a handful of the more prominent rhythmic tracks from the main disc. This disc is fairly interesting but serves no other real purpose other than to emphasise to the listener that they really were pulling this stuff out of the machines in real time. Hear that? That’s some sucking dolby hiss from some arcane piece of technology, it’s real dammit! Real!

It all adds up to an altogether different Autechre album which is mostly enjoyable as a collection of intriguing moments. Possibly cursed by it’s own breadth and scope Quaristice is less an album in the classic Autechre vein but more a rare insight into the duo’s working habits. Three years on from Untilted and with another three to go before the next one (at a guess) I must admit I’m finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile that this is a full-on Autechre release. Fun, yes. But below the surface it seems almost a lazy record, an officially sanctioned bootleg for the fans. Whether it justifies a fully-fledged release is difficult to say as for me the whole experience was never simply about the CD. I managed to catch the live show on the Tuesday after the album was released, this took place at a seemingly run-down car park in Hearn Street. The show was fantastic and consisted of an hour of thudding electro and hip-hop inspired dance floor devastations, all in almost complete darkness. Autechre’s live sets in recent years have consisted almost entirely of unique material with only a smattering of recognisable moments from the latest record. This is a testament to the band’s keen ear for the application of sound. They approach music in different ways according to the final domain, in this case a live environment calls for more repetition, punchier rhythms and less emphasis on abstract glitch noises.

Quaristice serves as this document for all their live shows over the past few years, punctuated by quiet contemplative moments. I have an inkling that if I had missed their live show and let the gorgeous photo-etched steel special edition slip through my fingers that the single-disc version would have been a bit more of a disappointment.

Rated: 5 out of 7

Potverdekke, een nieuw album van Autechre! Vorige week, eindelijk, aangeschaft.

Ah, Autechre, m’n soundtrack van the nineties. Incunabula, Amber, Tri Repetae,… Grijsgedraaid! Die eerste 4 releases, met bijhorende fantastische EP’s – Basscadet! Garbage! Anvil Vapre! Anti EP! – zijn absolute klassiekers op het gebied van elektronische muziek. De platen die daarop volgden heb ik ook wel gekocht maar deden me minder, het leek soms zo ver gezocht, misschien dat ik er niet genoeg naar geluisterd heb, of dat ik te weinig moeite deed om er eens goed naar te luisteren – feit is dat het waw-gevoel van bijvoorbeeld Amber of Tri Repetae niet geëvenaard werd. Tenminste, toch niet voor mij.

Tot ik Quaristice opzette. Ongelofelijke plaat, toegankelijker en melodieuzer dan z’n voorgangers. 

Niet meteen iets om op te zetten als de bomma langskomt, en, wees gerust, mijn buren zullen blijven denken dat ik hele dagen stofzuig of ander mechanisch werk verricht (terwijl het begot gewoon mijn cd’s zijn die ik afspeel).

In interviews vertellen de heren Booth en Brown dat ze terug naar de hardware gegrepen hebben, een soort van back to the roots. De goeie ambachtelijke elektronica, zeg maar!

Altibzz, de opener, opgebouwd uit heerlijke elektronische lagen die herinneren aan flardenTri Repetae,  het nerveus pulserende Theplc, dat je tot een restless leg syndrome veroordeelt, het ronduit satanische IO. Plyphon, Tri Repetae andermaal revisited, het prachtig hypnotiserende Perlence, het donkere Sonderem, het breekbare poppy Simmm, het-jongens toch!- ontroerend schone ParalelSuns. Steels, met een Amberachtige ondertoon, of het mechanische Tankakern. Hiphop met Autechre (Rale), Fol3, of hoe het klinkt als Merzbow gaat zwemmen, ik zeg maar wat! Fwze, dat is nog eens elektro, jongelui! Retro-futurisme met 90101-5l-l. ‘Iets wat nogal Japans aandoet, zoals Ken Ishii’, zou ik iemand kunnen horen praten over bncCastI.

Jaja. En we gaan maar door!

Theswere, strijkers! Ik zou zelfs durven stellen, ‘naar Trans Europe Express geluisterd, gasten?‘ Welkom verder in het matig creepy exploderende vuurwerk én onderwijl prachtig evoluerende WNSN, hola, hola, hola, rustig blijven bij chenc9, ook al zou’t niet misstaan bij dat andere elektronicagenie, Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin. 

Notwo, ietwat aan Polar Sequences (Higher Intelligence Agency vs Biosphere) herinnerend, prachtig!

Om bij nummer 20 (twintig!) te eindigen bij Outh9, zo weggeplukt uit de soundtrack van een donkere film, een Autechresong om in te kaderen!

Wat een plaat, wat een plaat. Ze hebben het toch maar weer eens gedaan, die kerels van Autechre. Want, ook al klinkt Quaristice hier en daar zoals de Autechre van weleer, van recyclen is er geen sprake.

U moet het gehoord hebben. Kopen die plaat, en opzetten, vollen bak ! (Laat de buren maar denken!)

Un album d’Autechre est toujours fascinant, avant même son écoute. Les pochettes, les titres de morceaux, tout est fait pour donner à une œuvre un caractère mystérieux avant d’avoir mis le disque en marche. Quaristice ne déroge pas à la règle: on se noie dans le bleu profond de cet artwork, sur lequel on distingue le tracklisting, et même le code barre et les informations légales. A l’arrière, toujours ce bleu, agrémenté de deux carrés noirs et blancs. A l’intérieur, on trouve toujours ce schéma tricolore, et ce bleu, ce bleu omniprésent.

Mais parlons de la musique. Quaristice n’est certainement pas l’album si accessible que l’on nous avait annoncé. Bien sur, le duo revient ici à un son beaucoup plus mélodique que sur ses dernières œuvres, ouvertement expérimentales, presque uniquement basées sur des rythmiques toujours plus complexes (Confield et Draft 7.30 en particulier étaient des sommets de ce genre), et on trouve même ici des morceaux qui n’auraient pas dénaturé Amber (le chef-d’œuvre mélodique du groupe). Mais l’alternance de passages très mélodiques et de sections rythmiques, ajouté au nombre de morceaux, fait justement toute la difficulté de cet album: on ne peut jamais réellement savoir à quoi s’attendre. Les morceaux font généralement moins de cinq minutes, ce qui est très inhabituel pour Autechre qui nous avait habitué à de longues (dé)constructions progressives: ici, les idées sont exploitées de façon beaucoup plus courtes et les développements plus immédiats. Et contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait penser cela est loin de faciliter la tâche pour l’auditeur qui se voit entraîné d’un paysage à l’autre sans avertissement: il est très difficile de cerner les différentes pistes et les premières écoutes sont très déstabilisantes.

Il faut donc un certain temps d’adaptation pour appréhender ce Quaristice. Car si certains morceaux, comme le binôme Tankakern / rale (la programmation de Tankakern, accompagnée d’une basse massive est imparable, les synthés stressants et le beat minimal de rale le sont tout autant), ou les morceaux aux rythmiques presque acid comme 90101-5|-| ou chenc9 qui nous rappellerait presque Aphex Twin, sont immédiatement efficaces, la plupart des vingt morceaux du disque ne se révèlent qu’après des écoutes répétées. Mais passé ce cap, Quaristice livre toute la beauté de ses paysages opaques, flous. Et l’on s’aperçoit de la profonde beauté des morceaux ambient comme l’introductif Altibzz, le nocturne Notwo ou le très sombre paralel Suns (le titre du morceau en lui même est splendide), des mélodies incroyables que recèlent des joyaux comme le magnifique Theswere aux accents chinois, le brillant Simmm aux sons rebondissants ou le mystérieux et déstructuré WNSN, qui mélange une mélodie étrange à une programmation electronica de très grande qualité. On se rend compte de la folie qui habite IO ou Perlence, par exemple, avec leurs mélodies malades. Ou encore que les pistes les plus electronica, ne sont justement pas de simples boucles complexes tournant en roue libre: des morceaux comme bnc Castl mais surtout plyPhon nous achèvent à coups d’assauts rythmiques, alors que Steels et Fol3 laissent une impression de vertige, avec ces sons sortant de nulle part. Autechre démontre également son talent pour trouver des rythmes déstructurés et pourtant donnant une envie immédiate de balancer sa tête en rythme (osez me dire que Pen Expers sur Confield n’était pas groovy!): The Plc ou fwzE par exemple sont vraiment très dansants… Au final, chacun des titres de ce disque révèle donc au fil du temps des qualités que l’on n’avait pas perçues lors des premières écoutes.

Plus qu’un disque d’electronica, c’est donc bien un grand disque de plus qu’Autechre nous livre ici avec ce Quaristice. Mystérieux, flou, beau, inquiétant, opaque, dansant, complexe, mélodique, abrasif, étrange, Quaristice est tout ça à la fois, et même bien plus. Un peu comme un laboratoire d’idées, ce disque nous emmène dans des contrées inexplorées (voire plusieurs en même temps par moment) en les enchaînant les unes après les autres, ce qui peut laisser un arrière-gout de mystère lors des premières écoutes, même si les morceaux plus accessibles permettent déjà de déceler des qualités au disque. Mais c’est vraiment en y revenant à de plusieurs reprises que vous découvrirez les vraies qualités enfouies dans ce voyage sonore. Le duo de Sheffield vient donc une nouvelle fois de publier un chef-d’œuvre, voire même l’un de ses meilleurs albums… Mais il est sans doute encore trop tôt pour en juger.

Autechre – Quaristice (2008, Warp)

1. Altibzz
2. The Plc
3. IO
4. plyPhon
5. Perlence
6. SonDEremawe
7. Simmm
8. paralel Suns
9. Steels
10. Tankakern
11. rale
12. Fol3
13. fwzE
14. 90101-5|-|
15. bnc Castl
16. Theswere
17. WNSN
18. chenc9
19. Notwo
20. Outh9X

MySpace: Autechre

Music: I love the new Black Keys album, Attack and Release, which seems to paint from a more soul-based palate than the previous hard garage-blues of their other releases. Produced by Danger Mouse and working off songs written for an planned Ike Turner collaboration, it’s a magnificent work and their best album to date. From a history of dislike, I have found common ground with Autechre on Quaristice which is a beautiful work of celestial wonder, if perhaps a side too long. I’m also in the process of purchasing vinyl in anticipation of getting a new system with a turntable again so I’ve been working back into the classic part of my collection to figure some shiny discs that need to be replaced by the warm fuzz of spinning black. So far, Talking Heads’ first record, two Smiths (eponymous debut and Queen is Dead) and Otis Redding’s Otis Blue are winging their way to me. Key this time will be Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and both great albums by The Band.

Film: It’s been a documentary filled week mostly as me and my general watching buddy Tommy catch up on the edutainment we’ve been missing. This week we took in My Kid Could Paint That (review coming today) and Taxi to the Dark Side, both of which raised tough and interesting question within their relative worlds. The latter particularly worked at making Rumsfeld an even more hated and crooked figure than before, no mean feat. The best though were the classic Hearts of Darkness, the chronicle of Francis Ford Copolla creating Apocalypse Now and the just stupefying mistakes made with hindsight. It functions on an emotive level and as part of my documentary review season on here, I’ll discuss it in more detail at a later date. Best of all was Lake of Fire, Tony Kaye’s nigh-on unwatchable examination of abortion in America which served to make me examine my own views and simultaneous make those previous views stronger in their convictions. It should be shown to everyone in America.

TV: Lost trundles on and delivered a decent pre-break episode with Michael coming back. It’s still tough to love now the end is creeping into sight but I’m sure it’s finale will deliver and I’ll be back again. How I Met Your Mother returned which two slightly annoying episodes, one about growing old with grace and one about Britney Spears. Other stuff happened but essentially that’s what it revolved around. It was uncomfortable but Barney still managed to pull off some good gags. Not enough though from Lily, Marshall and Robin. America’s Next Top Model went mad this week with Tyra completely falling off the edge of the crazy-cliff while Clare turned out to be a spiteful, bullying bitch. Hells yeah!! Love it. Finally, Gavin and Stacey reached the midpoint of its second season and it remains the standout best show on British television.

Books/Comics: Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandreskan is something of a masterpiece of accessible reporting and works as a cutting satire of the American war effort. If Paul Greengrass can catch the mood of the book in his film adaptation, we could finally get our first truly great movie about Iraq. After that, I’ve lined up Willy Vlautin’s Northern Line and Mark ‘E’ Everett’s Things the Grandchildren Should Know.

Other: Podcasts remains an obsession and my favourites right now are Slate’s Political Gabfest and KCRW’s Left, Right and Center. While a wild polemic, Real Time with Bill Maher just as well on audio while outside the political genre, I love KCRW’s The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell (the Julian Schnabel one is very strong) and Mark Kermode’s film reviews for Radio 5. I’m also adoring my breakfast muffins right now with a little butter but oh my god I love soup. That’s the number one right now. Waitrose do such a marvellous range including this farmer’s range one of Crab and Asparagus which is ridonkulous.